The Role of Local Knowledge and Culture in Child Care in Africa: A Sociological Study of Several Ethnic Groups in Kenya and Uganda

Scarce cloth hardcover, [10] + viii +154 pages, NOT ex-library. Very good interior: clean, bright, untanned, with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Boards show extensive grubby handling marks, dusty fingermarks, rubbing. Issued without a dust jacket. -- Contents: 1 Leveraging Indigenous Knowledge for Child Care: "Every mother dances her baby" (Luhyia proverb) [Introduction; Strong Foundations: Why Focus on the Early Childhood Phase?; Early Childhood Development in Kenya and Uganda: An Overview; Child Wellbeing Indicators; Weak Child Care Environments; Making a Case for Indigenous Knowledge for Child Development; Indigenous Knowledge and Child Development: Promoting African Perspectives] 2 Doing Research on Indigenous Knowledge: "Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter" (African proverb) [Study Sites; Understanding Child Care Through the Development Niche Theory; Reaching Back to Inform the Contemporary: Appreciative Action-Oriented Inquiry; Research on Indigenous Knowledge: An Interactive Multigenerational Investigation; Study Participants and Process; Data Analysis and Dissemination: Progressive Verification; Scrutinizing Self as Researcher: Reflexive Positioning During the Research on Indigenous Knowledge; Indigenous Knowledge: Not a Package of Practice] 3 The Village Still Raises the Child: "The future of the African child lies deep within the African family and the rich, strong, living, growing, sustaining African culture" (Callaghan 1998:33) [Engaging the Local in Child Care; Challenges and Stress of Child Care Giving; Resilient Villages: Bolstering Communal Care Systems; Brooding on Care: Spreading Wings Over Vulnerable Children and Households; Home Grown Resources: Leveraging Indigenous Resources for Child Care; Community Fostering; Providing Support to Elderly Caregivers; Role of Men in Childcare: Fathers Also 'Dance' Their Babies; Power of Indigenous Philanthropy; Beyond Data Mining: Research as an Intervention in Strengthening the Care Environment] 4 Promoting Contexually-Relevant Child Rights: "A child must not be deprived of his/her play seed" (Luo proverb) [Social-Cultural Conceptions of Childhood and Childcare; Holistic Early Childhood Development: Childhood Begins at Conception; Changing Conceptions of Childhood; Promoting Contextually Relevant Child Rights; Naming, Identity, Self-esteem and Self-concept; Local Engagement with Rights: Lost in Translation; Rooting the Global in the Local to Strengthen Child Rights] 5 Silenced Narrative of Child Participation and Resilience Building: "If you start something and you fail to involve children in it, it will surely fail" (Yoruba proverb) [Participatory Learning and Pedagogy] 6 'Re-membering' Indigenous Knowledge in Child Care: "A person who abandons his/her culture is a slave (to the new culture)" (Swahili proverb) [Privileging the 'Other' in Knowledge Production; Call for Dialogue: Going Beyond the False Traditional / 'Modern' Dyad; Whose ECD? Asking Critical Questions in Child Development Discourse; Civic Driven Transformation; Remembering Indigenous Knowledge: Rescuing Child Development from the Single Narrative]; References; Index -- This book examines how local community members are leveraging indigenous resources to cope with the exigencies of compromised care contexts. It explores the distinctive and varied ways in which parents and families in local communities in Kenya and Uganda creatively draw from their socio-historical contexts to provide care for their children. The book contributes to the growing discourse on the need to develop culturally and particularly Africa-centered approaches to development. The authors make a strong case for the need to root the dominant narrative of child development in the diversity of local narratives, and to promote and support culturally relevant child policy and programming that is respectful and inclusive of local perspectives and inputs. …